Pace Prints is pleased to announce an exhibition of prints by Jean Dubuffet, on view February 16 – March 9, 2024, at its gallery located at 536 West 22nd Street. A public opening reception will be held Friday, February 16, 6–8pm.
The exhibition of print and multiple editions will include a variety of Dubuffet’s iconic imagery, published in the 1970s by Pace Prints, in which he employed both traditional and innovative uses of the screen printing technique.
Discover Jean Dubuffet's historical editions with Pace Prints in our online viewing room.
In his Présences Fugaces series of prints and Le Vizir, Dubuffet (1901–1985) employed the traditional screen printing process to render his signature L’Hourloupe figurative personnages in two different scales directly on paper. In contrast, the Site de Mémoire series of monumental screen print editions were created by printing the image directly onto stretched canvas, an unconventional application of the medium.
Dubuffet made another ingenious use of the screen printing process for his sculptural multiple edition, Le Tétrascopique. It was realized by printing interlocking fields of figurative and abstract elements onto both sides of four shaped panels, arranged in a square to form a hollow column, with multiple faces visible from any vantage point. Like his gigantic “painted sculptures” Le Tétrascopique creates a multi-layered interplay between picture and three-dimensional space.
In the exhibited Faits Mémorables prints, Dubuffet expanded the use of screen printing by doubling the process to create the illusion of three-dimensional collaged images. Figurative and abstract images were printed first and then layered, before being re-screened and reprinted to create the final collaged illusion on the flat printed surfaces.
The scope of Dubuffet’s prolific creativity is encapsulated in these printed works, that span a period in which both his style and technical experimentation evolved rapidly and came to cement his singular legacy as a groundbreaking innovator of visual art.